About

‘Apparitions’ – a new artwork by Luciana Haill

This is a self-selecting, inspirational, immersive art experience in three scenes. I have designed and made a smart phone app that transcends a purely informational use, its presence is anchored to 3 surreal soundtracks, each travelling through time – ‘bringing back the bygone‘.

The old metal teapot approaches you, bobbing about on an invisible sea. You get a sense of itself and its past, a vessel for holding liquid is now empty, buyoant and surrounded by water. This lowly tarnished object is the only survivor from a storm that swept its environment of a beach hut out to sea, along with many more. This is triggered from a postcard depicting a picnic outside a Bexhill beach hut, and is narrated by the voice of someone with fond memories of this place. In addition you can encounter
bygone sites that sadly did not survive the elements, wars or council changes in traffic control ! Apparitions has 2 more 3D models of bygone heritage sites specifically St Leonards Pier and The Clocktower Memorial . Once more these can be triggered anywhere you like, on smart phones by downloading a free app when viewing specially encoded vintage postcards. Combining augmented reality with a time-travelling immersive audio experience, to be launched 1st September 2018.

It is a significant exploration of the impact of cutting edge ‘augmented reality’ technologies on memory & experience. Focussing on my hometown of Hastings & St Leonards I will recreate locations such as St Leonards Pier (destroyed in WWII) & the Albert Memorial (lost to fire in 1973) as virtual 3D models viewable using smartphones.

The work will launch as a downloadable app during Coastal Currents Festival 01.09.18 with a showcase event at Hastings Museum 22.09.18 (who hold related objects in their collection). Presentations will take place at the Burton’s St Leonards Heritage Society, Brighton Digital Festival & the Universities of Brighton & Greenwich, accompanied by a press campaign.

I am making a series of digital artworks exploring memory, decay & changes in a seaside town facing gentrification, simultaneously conveyed by its current & ambitious Victorian settlers. Using augmented reality (AR) to add historical & surreal layers on smartphones. Lost heritage sites represent each with a time spanning binaural sonic signatures encapsulating their heyday. Victorian architecture & experiences are triggered by vintage postcards & by taking a photo when visiting its bygone location. Realised from museum archives & interviews including St Leonards pier, The Memorial & Lido.

Each binaural soundscapes for a site will create a sonic signatures conveying news, music and environmental ambience during the lifetime of the site. The artworks are preserving and enriching historical and cultural antiquities onto smart phones (eventually both Android and iPhone.)

A visual analogy is a stylish, retrograde St Leonards experienced in the style of Google Earth, but unconventionally set during Victorian & Edwardian times, raising ‘ghost’ buildings up from what artist Brion Gysin called the ‘derelict dead’. Each site links to a website further communicating local peoples’ recollections & memories, add embedded value to tourists’ & schools trips, apparitions from lost sites & souls, normally only available by researching history books & exploring museums.

‘Apparitions’ was originally called ‘Zoomitage‘ – a play on words zooming into Heritage, a technique of looking at the past with the technology of the future to magnify details and instigate memories you could not possibly had.